Posted at 5:00 am
(Rouyn-Noranda) His music group is called Tumeurs.
And the least we can say is that Simon Turcotte hasn’t taken the Horne Foundry to his heart.
“The last job I had in my life was in a foundry,” he says.
A job as a confined space supervisor at a company contractor, which he had to quit abruptly in November 2015 “because of strange pains in his right leg”.
The diagnosis came: sarcoma. Malignant soft tissue tumor.
After the fourth recurrence, his leg had to be amputated “to the point of inability” after radiation therapy.
A causal connection between his last job and this “extremely rare, super-aggressive cancer that a young man of 26 catches out of nowhere when he is in top form” is impossible, Simon Turcotte recognizes immediately.
“But we understand the health risks associated with the Horne Foundry,” says the Rouyn-Noranda native.
He tries to explain these risks to his fellow citizens, especially on social networks, where he offers clear answers for those who want to minimize the problem of pollution caused by the foundry, which has been the focus of the news for a good part of the year.
My point is I know what cancer is. I know what it is, the consequences it can have in your life.
Simon Turcotte
“I find it absurd that the world isn’t concerned about this, especially with all the information we’ve had since this year,” he said. He receives La Presse in his music room, the punk house that serves as a small performance hall for “underground” artists.
Opposite is the Cabaret de la dernier chance, the city’s legendary performance hall where Richard Desjardins performed his first solo shows.
PHOTO DOMINIC LECLERC, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
The Horne Foundry in Rouyn-Noranda
And down the street: “the horns”, their lunar terrain, their whistles, their chimneys and smoke.
He also speaks about the foundry through his music, such as at the Rouyn-Noranda Emerging Music Festival in 2021, where he took to the stage in a hospital gown.
“Art reflects the reality of the artist,” he says.
The issue of the Horne foundry was very controversial at Rouyn-Noranda last year, regrets Simon Turcotte.
Many people don’t dare speak out because the foundry, which belongs to the Anglo-Swiss multinational trading group Glencore, “is holding the city hostage,” he believes.
“Not many people walk around in it,” he says, pointing to his badge with a skull and crossbones under the Glencore name.
PHOTO DOMINIC LECLERC, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Rouyn-Norandian musician Simon Turcotte addresses a badge criticizing multinational Glencore, owner of Horne Foundry.
Me, I have nothing left to lose, I could have died five times from cancer, I’ve already lost my leg, I’ve lost everything, I’m on welfare so I tell myself I’ll take it, the floor.
Simon Turcotte
But his interventions are not always well received.
“Especially from the people who work there; It seems like people don’t understand, even if you tell them, ‘I worked there too, I got sick, that could happen to you,'” he says.
He doesn’t get mad at the employees who insult him because he believes “it’s the company [qui] it gets to them that everyone is against them”, but on the other hand he is angry at the company and its leaders, whom he accuses of leading the population onto a boat.
“They say, ‘We’re going to make changes,’ but nothing has ever changed,” he enthuses, adding that with its billions in profits, the company would be perfectly able to “invest to not kill people.” .
If he doesn’t want to do it, if he doesn’t want to comply with Quebec regulations, he closes, he decides.
“Is that 500 jobs? We’re in the middle of a labor shortage, everywhere in the mines there’s a shortage of workers, here in Abitibi, they just have to get a CV somewhere else,” he says.
I guarantee you, carrying a resume is a lot less difficult than losing a leg.
Simon Turcotte
“It is still ironic to say that the city will not survive without a foundry that is literally killing us all slowly,” he wrote in July on the Facebook page of Regroupement Vigilance Mines Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
To a vice-president of the foundry workers’ union who replied: ‘Why do you live in Rouyn, my little genius? » [sic]Simon Turcotte explained his dependence on loved ones for various aspects of his daily life since losing a leg.
“I hope you make sure your mask seals well as you walk around the site [de la fonderie]I wish you none of that,” the musician concluded.
Learn more
1927 Year of the start of the activities of the Horne foundry in Rouyn-Noranda, which also included a mine until 1976
SOURCE: HORNE FOUNDRY
43,092 inhabitants of the city of Rouyn-Noranda
Source: Quebec Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing